In keeping with one of the announcements from his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama’s administration made a “College Scorecard” available to the general public. The project should enable “parents and students … to compare schools based on a simple criteria: where you can get the most bang for your educational buck,” Obama said in his address.

The College Scorecard received immediate criticism, for a variety of reasons. But aside from the fact that most of the “Scorecard’s” information can be found in the annual college rankings of U.S. News & World Report or the Princeton Review, the initiative has a serious issue. At a basic level, by only giving quantitative data, the Obama administration’s College Scorecard falls short of indicating “value” in addition to “affordability,” as Obama stated it would in the State of the Union address.

Users of the Scorecard can view several pieces of information about any college in the United States. If you search for Iowa State, for example, you can see the “average net cost” of attendance, the six-year graduation rate, the rate at which graduates default on their student loans, the “typical” amount of money borrowed for an undergraduate education and, eventually, graduates’ average earnings.

None of that information deals with the “value” half of Obama’s reasoning behind having the College Scorecard. Getting “the most bang for your educational buck” suggests that there is a bang — in the case of students, something learned, some connections made, etc. — that goes along with the dollars invested in their education at the university.

The College Scorecard does not discuss the range of majors offered by a college. It does not point to a student-to-faculty ratio. It does not incorporate the number of faculty in a given department. It does not enumerate the notable awards faculty have earned. It does not state the large research grants or impressive research projects done by a college’s faculty or on its campus. In short, it offers only the price of a product, not its quality.

College admissions offices and public officials constantly remind us of the correlation between an education beyond high school and a higher standard of living. Although those personal benefits exist, the acquisition of knowledge should not be a question of monetary profit and loss.

Knowledge is important in a social way, not just an economic way that deals with how scarce the skills a person possesses are. With knowledge and an awareness of the means to acquire it, such as the principles of logic and the scientific method, we free ourselves from dependence on others who may seek to distort the truth and reality in an attempt to benefit themselves. With a critical eye to the knowledge we have and the knowledge others offer as evidence for their arguments, we can carry public discourse to an honest, more productive plane.

Once acquired, knowledge cannot be taken away. We cannot unsee things, or unhear them, or forget as easily as we sometimes would like to. When facts are in dispute — the causes of the “Great Recession,” for example, or the federal government’s balanced budget at the end of President Clinton’s term — the possession and use of knowledge and thought is a more powerful check on tyranny than any constitutional guarantee.

And that, we think, is priceless.